The San Francisco 49ers didn’t attract a lot of praise this week following their narrow divisional round win over the Green Bay Packers.
San Francisco barely squeaked by the Packers thanks to a game-winning drive from Brock Purdy and a clinching interception from Dre Greenlaw, yet their performance on both offense and defense has since attracted scrutiny.
The 49ers’ defensive effort revealed flaws that the Detroit Lions will look to take advantage of in the NFC Championship Game, but a study of the All-22 tape and the numbers revealed a performance from Steve Wilks’ group, which stopped the Packers three times in the red zone, that was much better than many believe.
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Cutting out the errors
Green Bay did have success moving the ball on the San Francisco defense, but the Packers’ production was a little deceiving.
Excluding penalties, the Packers only managed five explosive plays (pass plays of 20 yards or run plays of 10 yards) in the entire game, with much of their progress on offense the product of uncharacteristic 49er errors. Three first downs came on pass interference penalties, the most costly a 41-yard penalty on Ambry Thomas that set the Packers up at the San Francisco 19-yard line and was immediately followed by a touchdown strike to Bo Melton.